Related papers: Multicanonical MCMC for Sampling Rare Events

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are employed to sample from a given distribution of interest, whenever either the distribution does not exist in closed form, or, if it does, no efficient method to simulate an independent sample from…

In this contribution, we propose a new computationally efficient method to combine Variational Inference (VI) with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). This approach can be used with generic MCMC kernels, but is especially well suited to…

Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods, also known as particle filters, constitute a class of algorithms used to approximate expectations with respect to a sequence of probability distributions as well as the normalising constants of those…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) produces a correlated sample for estimating expectations with respect to a target distribution. A fundamental question is when should sampling stop so that we have good estimates of the desired quantities?…

Bayesian inference under a set of priors, called robust Bayesian analysis, allows for estimation of parameters within a model and quantification of epistemic uncertainty in quantities of interest by bounded (or imprecise) probability.…

Bayesian hierarchical modeling is a popular approach to capturing unobserved heterogeneity across individual units. However, standard estimation methods such as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) can be impracticable for modeling outcomes from…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are used to estimate features of interest of a distribution. The Monte Carlo error in estimation has an asymptotic normal distribution whose multivariate nature has so far been ignored in the MCMC…

Importance sampling is a variance reduction technique for efficient estimation of rare-event probabilities by Monte Carlo. In standard importance sampling schemes, the system is simulated using an a priori fixed change of measure suggested…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are frequently used to approximately simulate high-dimensional, multimodal probability distributions. In adaptive MCMC methods, the transition kernel is changed "on the fly" in the hope to speed up…

Performing numerical integration when the integrand itself cannot be evaluated point-wise is a challenging task that arises in statistical analysis, notably in Bayesian inference for models with intractable likelihood functions. Markov…

Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is a widely used algorithm design scheme with many applications. To make efficient use of this method, the key step is to prove that the Markov chain is rapid mixing. Canonical paths is one of the two…

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms offer various strategies for sampling; the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) family of samplers are MCMC algorithms which often exhibit improved mixing properties. The recently introduced magnetic HMC,…

We outline a procedure for jointly sampling substitution matrices and multiple sequence alignments, according to an approximate posterior distribution, using an MCMC-based algorithm. This procedure provides an efficient and simple method by…

This paper shows how one can use Sequential Monte Carlo methods to perform what is typically done using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. This leads to a general class of principled integration and genetic type optimization methods based on…

This review treats the mathematical and algorithmic foundations of non-reversible Markov chains in the context of event-chain Monte Carlo (ECMC), a continuous-time lifted Markov chain that employs the factorized Metropolis algorithm. It…

Monte Carlo experiments produce samples in order to estimate features of a given distribution. However, simultaneous estimation of means and quantiles has received little attention, despite being common practice. In this setting we…

Importance sampling (IS) is commonly used for cross validation (CV) in Bayesian models, because it only involves reweighting existing posterior draws without needing to re-estimate the model by re-running Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC).…

In chaotic dynamical systems, a number of rare trajectories with low level of chaoticity are embedded in chaotic sea, while extraordinary unstable trajectories can exist even in weakly chaotic regions. In this study, a quantitative method…

Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of many systems, in particular those with conflicting constraints, can be considerably speeded up by using multicanonical or related methods. Some of these approaches sample with a-priori unknown weight factors.…

We describe parallel Markov chain Monte Carlo methods that propagate a collective ensemble of paths, with local covariance information calculated from neighboring replicas. The use of collective dynamics eliminates multiplicative noise and…